Virtually all vehicles are required by law to have safety or driving lights which must be utilized during darkness. This requirement applies to night driving but may also apply to a period of time during the transition period known as dusk as well during times of severe weather conditions. The requirement of these safety or driving lights applies in one form or another to almost all motor vehicles, from the singular driving lights on the back of a motorcycle to the extensive lighting systems required on tractor trailers. For the purposes of this application this invention will be considered relative to its use on large trucks, including tractor trailers.
Unfortunately, these lighting systems are extremely vulnerable to breakage either due to impact, electrical wiring failures, or simply because a light bulb burns out from normal use. This problem is exacerbated when dealing with truck lighting systems both from the perspective of increase breakage as well as the increased danger due to loss of lighting. By their very nature trucks are constantly being loaded and unloaded which often requires backing up to loading docks or entering locations where conditions are adverse as is the case in many situations such as picking up logs, animals, hay or other product which require the truck to travel to work areas where lights can be easily damaged. Furthermore, the loading and unloading processes often include the movement of heavy objects and the concomitant use of hand carts, fork lifts or other moving equipment which often damage lighting. The truck driver must also depend on the capabilities of those hired to load and unload the truck and is subject to the care or carelessness of those individuals.
Adding to the problem of normal usage is the additional factor, depending upon where the truck must travel or be parked, that truck lights can also the subject of vandalism especially in city areas.
For a greater appreciation of this problem, one need only to consider all of the products in ones home or office. By considering these items, from the mail which arrives daily to the lumber or steel used to construct the building, one soon realizes that virtually all of these items, have traveled at least once and often many times on a variety of different vehicles to reach their final destination. With this understanding one can begin to appreciate the vast scope of trucking and the numerous sites that trucks must travel to and from every day.
Compounding the problem of these broken lights is the fact that trucks generally travel on a relatively tight and well defined schedule. These schedules are often dictated by the companies or individuals who must be involved in the loading or unloading of the vehicle and only have personnel available during certain hours and/or shifts. Any trucker or trucking company will soon find themselves out of work if they are unable to meet the time schedules of the clientele which they serve. Whether one is dealing with overnight mail delivery services, fresh seafood for restaurants, or any one of a myriad number of other items tight and often difficult to meet schedules are integral to a trucker's life. Thus, whenever possible truck maintenance and repair is accomplished during normal down time when the truck is idle between runs. Most certainly, where a light or group of lights is damaged during the loading of a truck it is virtually impossible for the driver to take the time necessary to find a repair station, wait for the repairs, and still maintain the required time schedule. Cost effectiveness also becomes a factor since going to various service stations for repairs can be quite costly whereas the driver or company repair services can usually repair lighting failures efficiently and inexpensively if the trucker can complete his scheduled runs and get the truck to its next period of down time.
The practical result of these difficulties is that when a truck has a damaged light or even total loss of safety lighting systems the trucker will generally continue the run until the next period of down time. This results in conditions which are unsafe for both the truck driver and others on the road.
While one may think that the size of a truck alone makes it easily noticeable, the opposite is actually true. Because the truck is so large when it travels without lights other drivers coming upon the back or side of the truck, as happens when merging into traffic, may have only the vastness of the truck in their instantaneous field of vision. Essentially, the truck blocks out all backdrops in the other drivers line of sight which in some situations, for a few seconds, can make the truck almost invisible or at best hinder the other drivers ability to determine the distance to the truck. For example, when a driver turns a corner or seeks to merge into traffic and sees only a wall of blackness (the side or back of an unlit truck) he either becomes momentarily disoriented or else assumes the pathway is clear. In either event, the results of such an encounter are often tragic.
Another part of this problem is the fact that law enforcement officials impose significant fines for trucks with improper safety lighting. This is accomplished generally at truck check points and by law enforcement patrols. However, an interesting aspect of this is that the fines, although severe are not really meant to solve the problem but only keep it somewhat under control. It is recognized that truckers must travel with broken lights in order to keep their schedules and therefore these fines are fixed at a rate which encourages the driver to have the lights repaired during the trucks down time but the fines are not so onerous that the driver is forced to make the repairs during actual runs. This is because it is recognized that too much of our daily life depends on truck schedule maintenance and to affect these runs would not only cause severe financial hardship on the trucking companies but would dramatically effect businesses and individuals relying on those deliveries.
In an attempt to deal with this problem, harnesses with a plurality of safety lights have been suggested that plug into a truck cigarette lighter and thereby replace broken safety lights. Also, other lights have been provided which may be tied into the vehicle electrical system in order to achieve proper safety lighting.
The shortcomings with all of these approaches are several fold. First, where the installation of the backup safety lighting system is almost as time consuming as having the light repaired, no significant advantage is obtained. Secondly, where the lighting difficulty lies in the electrical system of the truck, tying a replacement light into that electrical system is meaningless.
After studying this problem and the various factors involved I made the following observations. That there was a need for a temporary replacement safety lighting system for trucks. That the system must remain intact despite the speed that the trucks travel, poor road conditions, and adverse weather conditions such as sleet, snow, rain etc. In addition, due to vandalism and theft the lighting system would need to appear to be an integral part of the vehicle and not easily removable. For similar reasons, the means for activating the light should not be so readily accessible that they could be easily turned off by those seeking to do mischief. Furthermore, the system needed to be protected from the elements both in its capacity to function as a light as well as its securement to the vehicle.
It was with these various problems and goals in mind that I began the development of a safety replacement light system which resulted in the subject invention.